He did, and Claire snatched it out of the air just as the older vampire made his run at her, howling.
Claire buried the pencil in his chest. She got lucky, sliding it between his ribs just as Myrnin had taught her to do in his occasional, completely random self-defense classes, and the older vamp’s eyes went wide and he fell at her feet, in the sun. Claire rolled him out of the way, but she left the pencil in his chest.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Michael said, and shook his head. “That is just embarrassing.”
“Have you noticed something about them?” Claire asked, shaking now that the surge of adrenaline was passing. The vampire Michael was leaning on swiped at him, but Michael easily avoided the blow.
“These guys? They’re not too smart.”
“They’re sick,” she said. “I recognize the way the older one moved. Notice that they’re not really talking? They can’t. They’ve been broken down to basic levels. Hunt and kill. Like the worst-off vampires in Morganville when I got there.”
Michael clearly hadn’t thought of that. His whole body language changed, and for a second Claire thought he was going to get up and move away from the other vampire, but sense won out over fear, and he stayed put. Michael had never gotten sick from the disease the rest of the vampires had carried; as the youngest, he’d never had the chance. But he’d seen what it had done to some of the others in Morganville. He’d seen the creatures they’d become, confined for their own protection in cells in an isolated prison.
“It’s okay,” she said. “You’ve had the shot, Michael. I don’t think you can get it now.”
She hoped that was true, anyway. If this was some new strain of the disease, then that was worse. Lots worse, especially if—as she suspected, from the condition of these two vampires, and the one she’d staked in the hall—they were actually getting sicker a lot faster than the typical Morganville vampire had.
Shane came pelting into the room, almost tripped over the pencil-staked vampire, and looked around, lost. “Uh—what happened?”
“Where’s Eve?”
“I left her next door,” he said. “She’s okay.”
“You lefther?” Michael snapped. “Oh, you’d better tell me you didn’t just say that.”
“She’s fine, Mike. She’s awake, kind of. I left her with a letter opener, hiding under a desk. She’s safer than any of us right now.” Shane looked down at the staked vamp at his feet. “Claire?”
“Yes?”
“You staked a vampire with a number two pencil.”
“I didn’t actually check the number.”
“Have I told you lately how freaking awesome you are?”
She tried to smile, but her heart was fluttering in her chest now, and not in a good way. “Compliments later. We really need to get out of here and get to the car. Any ideas?”
“Find another pencil and I’ll pin this one down, too,” Michael said.
“You know how weird that sounds, right?” Shane said. “Right, never mind. Number two pencil, coming up. Why do I feel like we’re taking a test?”
“Claire.” Michael looked past Shane, at her. “Go to Eve. Make sure she’s okay.”
Claire nodded and hobbled out the door, across the hall. The door was shut but not locked, and she pushed it open ...
Only to have to duck an awkward lunge from Eve, who was standing up, clinging to a chair and holding a glittering silver letter opener in one deathly tight-gripped hand. Eve yelped and opened her fingers to drop the knife when she saw what she’d almost done, and fell into Claire’s arms with a sob of relief. “You’re okay, you’re okay,” Eve whispered, and hugged her with feverish, shaking strength. “God, so sorry. I thought you were one of the creeps.”
“Not today,” Claire said, and winced at the blood trickling down the side of Eve’s face. “That must hurt.”
“Not so much now.” Eve’s eyes looked kind of vague and unfocused, but she was staying on her feet. That had to be a good sign. “I thought—I thought I saw Michael. But then Shane was here, and—”
“Michael’s here,” Claire said. “He was carrying you, but he had to fight. He’s coming, Eve. I told you he would.”
Eve squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, breathing deep. “Okay,” she said then, and her voice sounded stronger. “Okay. We’ll be okay.”
From the other room, Claire heard the sound of metal bending, and then a loud clang.“Yo!” It was Shane’s voice, ringing off stone and wood. “Girls, the party’s over. We are leaving!”
“Come on,” Claire said, and put her arm under Eve’s shoulders to keep her upright. “Time to go.”
“Where’s Jason?” Eve almost sounded in focus now, and on just the wrong topic. “We have to find him! ”
“He’s with Oliver,” Claire said. “We’ll find him. First, we have to make sure we stay alive, okay? Very important.”
The two of them staggered together across the hall into the room where two vampires were lying on the floor, pinned by pencils, and Michael and Shane were standing at the window. The bars were broken out. Michael was sensibly off to the side, away from the sun, and he’d draped one of the thick, dusty curtains over his shoulders. Claire supposed he was going to use it to cover his head.
But neither he nor Shane was moving.
“What?” Claire asked, and as she came to the window and looked out, she realized what the problem was.
The police car was on fire.
And so was the bus, with big, crackling, very public flames.
And nobody, nobodyhad come out to gawk. No police had come running. Not even the volunteer fire department.
Blacke was a dead town—literally.
“We are screwed,” Shane said, very matter-of-factly. “Plan B?”
“There isn’t one,” Michael said.
“You know, I kind of saw that one coming,” Eve said. “Even with a concussion.”
They stood there for a moment, watching the car and bus burn, and for a few seconds nobody said anything. Then Michael said, “Morley didn’t do that. Morley isn’t that stupid.”
“It damn sure wasn’t Oliver,” Shane added. “So what the hell is going on around here?”
“You should tell us. You were riding with Morley; we just got here.”
“Yeah, funny thing, getting tied up and hustled around by hungry vampires made me not notice the little things. All I know is that we got into the building, Morley was making some speech, and next thing I knew, one of Morley’s crew was yelling that we were being attacked. I grabbed Eve and tried to get her under cover, but she got clocked by Morley when she got between him and some guy he was fighting. She hit her head.” Shane paused and glanced at Michael. “What’s your excuse?”
“I lost track a while ago,” Michael said. “Right about the time Oliver detoured us into Crazytown for no good reason. Unless this is what he was looking for all along.”
“What, a town full of sick vampires?” When Claire said it, suddenly it made sense. “He was.He knew they were here. Somewhere, anyway. He was looking for them!”
“He thought they were in Durram,” Michael agreed. “That’s why he went off in the middle of the night searching. But if they ever were there, they moved on, to here. Smaller town. Easier to control, before they got too sick to care.”
“But these dudes are not exactly historical,” Shane said, and nodded toward the kid in the football jersey. “That’s not some vintage outfit he’s wearing; he can’t have been vamped more than a few months ago, a year at the most. So how did he—”
“Bishop!” Claire interrupted. “Bishop was looking for Amelie. And he was making new vampires all the time, just making them and leaving them.” She shuddered. “He must have come through here, or someplace close.” Bishop was Amelie’s father—both physically, and in a vampire sense, apparently. And in neither sense was he going to win a Father of the Year award. Or get a humanitarian plaque, either. He’d snacked on necks, and this was what he’d left behind him.
Scary, and disgusting.